The IDEO team quickly discovered that the challenge of designing a Digital@FEMSA super app for tens of millions of customers was matched only by the operational complexity of bringing together different teams that had already created various apps with separate value propositions. Not to mention the 22,000 stores specifically tailored to local communities.

To kick off the project, the IDEO team built on FEMSA’s already deep understanding of its customers by meeting them in their homes and communities. The team discovered that users didn't care about long-term rewards; instead, they wanted everyday help to thrive long-term. Connecting omnichannel rewards to regular spending would allow them to save time and money—something they said was particularly important. Along with market research, insights like these directly informed the app's design, ensuring that it was compatible with users' everyday habits and preferences.

Meanwhile, the project team also worked to ensure the app fit the priorities of the various teams inside Digital@FEMSA, designing a comprehensive process for testing joint value propositions. Together, the team created a new design system, iconography, and set of unifying principles. IDEO also worked closely with the Digital@FEMSA teams to ensure that the app's design was in line with their strategic goals and technical capabilities, and built the app's initial information architecture. They incorporated secure transactions, effortless coupon redemption, personalized offers, and a cohesive loyalty program.

From there, the IDEO and Digital@FEMSA teams quickly transitioned into the design and development phase, producing prototypes of the new app, dubbed Spin Premia. With the help of user testing, they were able to continuously iterate to improve the app's features and functionalities, creating a user experience that was both seamless and intuitive. In just 10 months, they went from a small digital team with an ambitious idea, to a 150+ people product organization and an MVP launched in one region. And thanks to a tight partnership, the teams were able to seamlessly integrate Spin Premia into Digital@FEMSA's existing systems, resulting in a scalable implementation nationwide just a few months later.

The introduction of Spin Premia was a milestone in FEMSA's digital transformation path. Following a true ship and iterate model, just a few months into the project, the company released a smaller, focused version of the app in just one city in Mexico to quickly learn from customer experience before expanding to new regions. Since then, the Spin Premia app has quickly gained popularity, offering a safe and user-friendly platform that millions of Mexican consumers have embraced. It has also allowed FEMSA to broaden its digital portfolio and extend its customer base throughout Mexico, elevating customer satisfaction and fueling business expansion.

13 million Mexicans visit FEMSA’s OXXO convenience stores every day. But the company had ambitions to leverage digital experiences to increase customer engagement.

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To get there, Digital@FEMSA needed to deliver exceptional digital products with the agility to serve an entire population.

4.7 stars

Spin Premia’s app store rating

22.8 million

active Spin Premia program users

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Midscale hotel brands are the fastest-growing hotel segment in the US, attractive to both travelers and hotel owners. But often, their messaging feels repetitive, and travelers have a tough time differentiating between them. With a warm, thoughtfully designed midscale brand, IHG had an enormous opportunity to distinguish itself in a crowded market. 

IHG’s goal was to deliver a guest experience that felt genuinely unique and resonant—and quickly. With costs on the rise, many owners were motivated to turn toward conversion brands, which allow them to refurbish hotels under a new brand rather than invest in construction, a way to grow their portfolio in a tight financing market. Meanwhile, IHG’s competitors were set to introduce new conversion brands of their own. The company was looking for a partner that could work swiftly and iteratively to deliver a distinct brand.

For the IDEO team, the answer lay in communicating the brand’s value, starting with a custom logo rendered by hand. Inspired by vintage sign painting and modernist typography, the team sketched different versions of the letterforms, reviewing them with IHG until they had a set that brought to life the generosity and sense of invitation associated with the hotel’s spaces. They also worked to ensure the wordmark was visually balanced and would translate well across a variety range of scales. From there, they built an expansive brand world, including bespoke navigation icons, a full interior and exterior signage system, and a video to support the Garner launch.

The result is a hotel brand that stands apart in its category for both travelers and owners: thoughtful and well-designed yet affordable. As competition in the midscale segment continues to increase, Garner has been central to IHG’s growth strategy. Launched in the fall of 2023, Garner opened 100 hotels worldwide in just 16 months, making it the fastest-ever IHG brand to scale globally. The brand’s increasing popularity among owners and developers is driven by the growing demand for conversion properties, which accounted for 52% of IHG’s room openings in 2025. Garner plans to continue its rapid expansion with nearly 80 additional hotels in 12 key markets, including the US, Mexico, Italy, and Japan.

Conversions account for 12% of the global hotel pipeline, enabling hotels to switch brands and refurbish, boosting revenue without expensive construction.
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The US midscale hotel segment, valued at $14B, is expected to reach $18B by 2030.

100 new Garner Hotels

in less than 3 years—the fastest-scaling brand in IHG's history

500 Garner Hotels

planned in the next 10 years; 1,000 over the next 20

Alzheimer’s and dementia are notoriously difficult to treat—and scientists estimate that some 50 percent of people who have dementia are undiagnosed. Recognition of symptoms and early intervention are key. Together and IDEO set out to conduct user research to inspire new products that would help patients with cognitive decline take charge of their brain health.

The first priority was to expand the reach of the Moving Together program, which combines group movement exercises with mindfulness techniques, led by a trained group instructor. The IDEO team conducted remote and in-person interviews in Florida, where one in five residents is age 65 and older, and rates of Alzheimer’s and dementia are among the highest in the country. One of the key insights the team discovered was that many older adults didn’t understand how behaviors like smoking, exercise, and diet can be risk factors for cognitive decline. Their input inspired a new design principle for the program: “No naked feedback.” Any time participants received health coaching advice about modifying their lifestyle, they would also be given resources on why and how to do it, so they would have a pathway to boosting their brain health. 

The IDEO team folded insights like this one into the design for four new product offerings, including personalized brain health education, new online community engagement tools, partnership programs, and health coaching services, as well as a new user interface to illustrate them. Along with Together they also developed an implementation roadmap of next steps to bring the new digital product offerings to market, such as hiring a brain health coach and creating a new course curriculum. Now, Together has enrolled 165 people in the Boost Your Brain Health Clinical Trial, which is looking at outcomes such as reduced risk of Alzheimer's and maintenance of cognitive function for the Brain Health Together program. With trial completion in Q3 2024 and product launch in early 2025, growing numbers of people with MCI will have access to this exciting program. Together incorporated almost all of the elements from the IDEO roadmap into the final curriculum, and the team often refers back to insights the team gathered as guiding design principles.

Fighting barriers to diagnosis

With its online program growing, Together wanted to take on an even bigger problem: dementia underdiagnosis. Co-founder Dr. Deborah Barnes had recently developed an algorithm that uses patients’ health records to calculate their risk of undiagnosed dementia, called the electronic health record Risk of Alzheimer's and Dementia Assessment Rule (eRADAR). Together was looking to find creative ways to equip and empower providers to use risk scores like eRADAR in primary care settings.

One piece of the puzzle? Many primary care doctors are unaware that better management of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia can have a positive impact on other chronic health issues—like diabetes, hypertension, and depression. So by encouraging providers to prioritize dementia care, they can help support the overall health of older adults with cognitive decline. The IDEO team recommended a curriculum for continuing education courses for doctors that make that link clear—another step toward increasing dementia diagnosis and improving overall health.

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Better help, sooner

To understand the patient experience, Together and IDEO decided to work directly with patients and caregivers to uncover what was stopping them from asking for dementia screening. The IDEO team quickly learned many patients were afraid of facing a diagnosis that signified a loss of agency and control, especially when they didn’t believe there were good treatment options. Often, they were unaware that there were things they could do to improve their brain health. They needed to know what steps to take after a diagnosis, and who could provide actionable advice. In response, the IDEO team designed a digital activity toolkit and physical booklet to guide patient families through the early stages of a dementia diagnosis, including recognizing the signs and symptoms, having better conversations with their doctor, and getting connected to support groups and programs like Moving Together.

Solving the problem of dementia underdiagnosis involves complex systems-level thinking and designing for the entire health ecosystem of patients, providers, and insurance payers, and solutions for Alzheimer’s and dementia care are still in their infancy. But already, this work is empowering patients and doctors to prioritize brain health and get screened sooner, and Together, which has since been acquired by Linus Health, is still working to move dementia care forward.

Approximately 12-18% of people aged 60 or older live with mild cognitive impairment, while memory loss, Alzheimer's and dementia affect more than 50 million people around the world.

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An estimated 50% of people living with dementia are undiagnosed.

165 enrolled

in the Boost Your Brain Health Clinical Trial

Many companies view culture-building initiatives as nice-to-haves. At Moderna, Mindsets are a business imperative, crucial to its plans to develop breakthrough products quickly.

For companies working on solutions as vital as a COVID-19 vaccine, delays and mistakes don’t just mean missing a product launch date—they’re life-or-death, and on a large scale. Moderna had to ensure that its employees knew how to make the right decisions, evaluate risk, and move quickly—even if they came from organizations with more bureaucracy and less risk tolerance. In 2021, IDEO sat down with longtime Moderna veterans to hear stories about moments that exemplify the company's culture, like the day a critical piece of equipment arrived but was too big to fit through the door. Taking it apart would have added days to their timeline. So employees took sledgehammers to a wall instead. Stories like this one fed into the crafting of the list of Mindsets, such as “Act with urgency: Action today compounds the lives saved tomorrow” and “We behave like owners: The solutions we’re building go beyond any job description.”

To gather feedback, the team shared the draft Mindsets with a diverse set of employees—new hires, veterans, folks already closely aligned with the culture, folks for whom it wasn’t the most natural fit, and a plethora of employee resource groups. CEO Stéphane Bancel and the leadership team took crafting and iterating on the Mindsets very seriously, wordsmithing and tweaking them with the team until they were ready to share them officially. Now, new hires learn about the company’s Mindsets in Moderna ONE, an onboarding process that IDEO helped revamp, while existing employees attend a workshop to ensure everyone at the company knows not only what to do but also how to do it effectively. In a matter of weeks, IDEO helped Moderna codify its culture for employees and set the company up for continued success. Moderna continues to embed these Mindsets across the entire employee lifecycle to systematically scale its culture.

For employees new and old, the clarity of the Mindsets has made it easier to understand expectations and to understand the company itself. Long-term veterans responded with comments like, "These really help explain why we're working this way,” while one newbie said, "It feels like a homecoming to hear the culture that we’re trying to bring through.” But more than just solving a cultural issue, the new Mindsets have fulfilled a business imperative: Holding on to the secret sauce that made Moderna successful to begin with, setting the stage for its next five years of breakthroughs.

When the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the COVID-19 health crisis a pandemic in March of 2020, Moderna had fewer than 1,000 employees. Four years later, it’s more than five times the size.

Ranked #1

BioSpace Best Place to Work, large company in 2024

Ranked #6

Boston Consulting Group’s 50 Most Innovative Report in 2023

Ranked #4

Deloitte’s Technology Fast 500 List in 2023

1. Design for human capabilities

We are in an uncomfortable place at the moment. Technology has connected us all more than ever, but we are feeling less substantive connection with one another. Human interaction has been reduced to lowest common denominators. Unhappy people click more. Now technology is starting to displace us. In the next few years, deep learning-based AI will take over human activities, from driving to medical diagnosis. The discomfort is increasing as society faces mass redundancy, increased inequality and a crisis of meaning. We can all feel it coming. Design can help.

The amazing thing about good design is that it looks at ambiguity and disruption and sees fertile ground. There is huge opportunity when we focus on things that humans are uniquely equipped to do—empathy, creativity, care, love.

If we do it right, we can conceive and shape new roles for humans in a layer on top of the efficiencies that machines can achieve. We can use those uniquely human traits to re-find and enhance community and depth in our relationships with each other. We can go from Artificial Intelligence to Augmented Intelligence.

—David Webster, Partner, IDEO Palo Alto

2. Design for emotional wellness

The uncertain state of the world is having clear consequences for individual health. You see it in the headlines everyday: Kids paralyzed by anxiety. Suicides by gun. Addiction to opioids. We live in the most technologically connected times, yet our rates of loneliness are increasing. If you dig deep, the common root is an absence of emotional and mental well-being.

I’m not talking about the well-being that’s branded through luxury experiences, like wellness retreats. I’m talking about what Maslow missed at the very bottom of his hierarchy: that sense of inner well-being that is absolutely necessary for our survival as humans.

What’s exciting about our moment now is that science has surfaced the myriad ways we can cultivate emotional and mental well-being—all of which are new channels for design.

Designing ways to get better sleep is also a way of designing for resilience to stress and better ability to manage our emotions. Tackling loneliness and designing for meaningful social connection is also a way of designing for a stronger immune system and brain protection. (Conversely, enabling chronic loneliness is as bad as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.) Designing ways to help people find their sense of purpose and meaning in life is an incredibly powerful way to design for healthier mind and bodies.

More and more, designers will realize their superpowers. Doctors and nurses are key players in facilitating wellness, but let's not forget that designers can be healers, too.

—Ann Kim, Portfolio Director, IDEO Cambridge

[This portion was also featured in Fast Company.]

3. Design for circularity

While it's easy these days to lament the state of the environment and the need for change, there's some hope to be found in the increased momentum towards a more circular economy. Collaborations between industry and design have yielded smart, feasible ideas for redirecting waste streams and reconnecting key stakeholders.

Businesses are investigating new product and packaging design that enables materials to be used again and again; they're asking how to leverage logistics in more efficient ways; and they're conceiving of new ownership models that could extend the lifecycle of the products they make.

The next questions on the horizon revolve around the economic systems that need to be in place to support these circular innovations. For example, we can design buildings so that they can be deconstructed—a circular engineering idea—but the cost of labor makes that reality prohibitive. In 2019, it's time for more applied circularity, leveraging emerging technology, organizational design, human insights, and social networks to create the conditions for the circular economy to take hold.

—Lauren Yarmuth, Portfolio Director, IDEO New York

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With 2018 fading into the distance, we're looking with hopeful eyes toward what the next year may bring. Our ongoing projects and client work help us hold up a mirror to reflect on what’s been happening and make informed predictions about what’s to come. Here are a few forecasts from IDEO leaders on prospective trends in design and tech.

If you know what we’re talking about, you could well be one of the world’s frustrated changemakers. You can see that change is essential, but you’re struggling to light the spark because your business’s indicators are all annoyingly positive. If this is you, what can you do? Should you hope for—or, even, engineer—a crisis?

This was one of the questions a group of business transformation leaders took on recently, at our Make Change Happen event in Munich, Germany.

“It would be a lie to say that a good crisis or a good disruption doesn’t help,” said Roman Lentz, Chief Digital Transformation Officer at global building materials firm Heidelberg Cement. “Because if you honestly look at organizations that change the fastest, they’re the ones with their backs most strongly against the wall… And frankly, that’s my challenge, because we’re not in crisis. We’re producing healthy margins. We’re not seeing cement being disrupted any time soon.”

Sandra Schiller, Head of Product Management for Valves and Automation at Georg Fischer Piping Systems, agreed. A crisis, Schiller noted, “can force through faster changes.”

But this doesn’t mean you should wait for a crisis, as London’s black taxis discovered, a few years too late.

“Black taxis were untouchable,” said Ben Terrett, CEO of Public Digital, a firm that partners with IDEO and specializes in digital transformation. “So untouchable that some of their services and ways of operating were protected by regulation. They have special parking spaces in London, special streets only they can go down… certain roads only they can pick up from.”

But then wave after wave of digital disruption flooded in as they sat behind the wheel, watching their dominion ebb away. First, GPS meant that the traditional cab drivers’ knowledge of London’s labyrinthine streets was no longer the golden ticket it had once been.

Then Uber arrived, and its bookable, predictable, low-cost rides started to eat into the black taxi business. So how did London’s cabbies respond?

“Their defense has ended up being reputation,” said Terrett. “That’s basically their only defense: ‘But we’re the black cabs!’”

Turns out customers weren’t as attached to the reputation of London’s cabs as cabbies were—and they couldn’t compete with the convenience and cost-cutting of on-demand services. Now the London Taxi Drivers Association (LTDA) wants to sue Uber for the earnings its 25,000 members lost in the first five years they were operating in the city. The LTDA estimates that cabbies lost £10,000 each per year, and has been taking legal advice to sue for £1.25 billion.

It didn’t have to come to this.

“What’s interesting is that people have been trying to help them—by building services on top of their service,” said James Higgs, Executive Director for Digital Transformation at IDEO London.

In 2011, the year before Uber launched in London—Hailo, now MyTaxi, tried to bring the predictability of a booking app to the black cabs.

“Taxi drivers didn’t even want that,” Higgs said. “They would charge you an outrageous minimum fare… they even resisted companies trying to help them deliver a better service!”

We don’t want to pick on London’s iconic cabs and their drivers. They’re not even employees of a centralized company that one could point a finger at—they’re self-employed. But we think there are lessons here for us all.

“The black cabs are a good analogy for a lot of businesses,” said Terrett. “I can see lots of industrial-era companies who, when digital organizations go after their market, their defense is ‘well, we’re us, we’re the number one brand in this market.’ That’s no longer a good enough defense.”

Here are three key takeaways for businesses looking to inoculate themselves for potential disruption:

1. Don’t wait for a crisis

Just as you shouldn’t wish for a crisis to happen, so you shouldn’t wait for a crisis to happen before you change.

“It’s really nice if you start in a safe environment in order to secure your future business,” says Georg Fischer’s Schiller. “It’s not about securing your business tomorrow, it’s about the business for the next few years. And as we are a 200-year-old company, we really would like to be around for another 200 years: And so we have to start working now.”

2. There’s an Uber for your industry, too

The leaders of large industrial companies like Heidelberg Cement and Georg Fischer are investing in digital transformation programs now—because, while there may be no Uber for cement or pipes or any of their other product lines yet, there’s probably an entrepreneur somewhere pitching an idea that sounds something like that to an investor right now.

And because, however unlikely it might seem to some today, it’s certain that digital transformation—defined by Tom Loosemore, a partner at Public Digital, as “applying the culture, practices, processes, and technologies of the internet era to respond to people’s raised expectations”—is going to disrupt every industry, including the one you work in.

3. Digital is your friend

Instead of thinking of digital disruption as a threat—you’re better off picturing it as a friend.

OK, so it’s a friend who needs a lot of hand holding at first. But as long as you’re prepared to invest the time and approach it from a human-centered point of view, digital transformation will make many things a whole lot better. It will increase your productivity, your pace of innovation, your rate of learning, and your customers’ expectations—and it’ll help you deliver on them.

When Georg Fischer’s design teams, for instance, began creating digital prototypes, so they learned new, more flexible, agile ways of working. And they started producing a new, digitally-enabled ‘smart part’ that alerts machine operators to problems in the system, so their customers now have more control over operations.

So, don’t sit by the curbside, your legacy engine idling, as you wait—hope even—for a crisis to come. Instead of clinging to what is, use digital to prepare for what might be. Welcome change in now, from a position of safety, and maybe you can secure your business’s long-term future—and save a cool £1.25 billion.

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Strange as it sounds, the main challenge for some people today is that their business isn’t in crisis. No blockchain or platform or AI startup is threatening to disrupt their market—yet.

Whether you’re looking to be more productive at work or make a more personal change, it helps to have a roadmap. Here are three low-fi methods to help you stick with your intentions for the New Year.

1. Start at the finish line

“Designing Your Life” (DYL) is a popular Stanford d.school course (and now, best-selling book) that helps you leverage design thinking to creatively envision your future. The curriculum guides you to identify and flesh out several different paths (or “odyssey plans”) that your future might take, in order to discover what’s possible and gain clarity about what matters most.

We can apply this same process to 2019. What are various directions that the next 365 days might take? What decisions or moments might guide the path ahead?

Try this:

• Close your eyes and visualize where you might be at the end of 2019, in as many as three different scenarios.
• Choose the path that excites you most, and write a eulogy, looking back on the passing of 2019. What did you learn, do, and experience? What events or opportunities created meaningful twists and turns along the way?
• Reflect on the eulogy and see if you can identify any surprising patterns or trends in the language. These might hint at a few of your New Year’s resolutions or areas that matter to you for 2019.
• Store the eulogy in a place where you’ll stumble upon it throughout the year, or seal the letter in an envelope to open one year from today.

2. Step into your discomfort zone

Doing things that scare us can be healthy and inspiring. Take Jia Jiang, who overcame his fear of rejection by spending 100 days asking for what he thought he would never receive—everything from a “burger refill” at a restaurant to a live radio interview. Not only did he gain confidence in asking for what he truly wanted, but he even walked away with some critical yeses to his asks, opening the door for him to do things he never thought possible.

What fears do you want to conquer in 2019? Here’s one way to get started:

• Draw three concentric circles on a piece of paper, like a target. The innermost circle is your comfort zone. As you move farther from the bullseye, you get farther outside your comfort zone. Everything outside the circle or by the edges of the paper are activities you need the most courage to do.
• Starting from the center and extending to the outermost ring, write down five to 10 activities in each area that you want to do but might need a little extra nudge to make happen.
• Compare your comfort zone map with a partner. Did you flag skydiving as “level-three scary,” only to find that it’s squarely within your partner’s innermost comfort zone? Maybe they could show you the ropes. See if there are also activities where the opposite is true, and your partner can lean on you in return.

3. Break up with it

Do you have a proclivity for showing up late all the time, or a tendency to scroll mindlessly through your Instagram feed in the morning, rather than starting your day intentionally? Do you have a behavior, activity, or even a physical belonging that you want to say goodbye to in 2019, so that you can make room for what you really want?

Once you know what you want to break up with, try this:

• Write a breakup letter. As you’re writing, consider: Why are you done with this behavior, activity, or thing, and what’s going to replace it? Why is this change so critical to make in 2019? How will you make sure that you don’t end up getting back together again? Sign the letter at the end and date it, as you would with a formal contract or pledge.
• Keep the letter in a place where you’ll be reminded to follow through, like on your nightstand or in your wallet.

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Ever since I was little, I’ve been experimenting with different ways to mix up my New Year’s resolution routine—from vision boards and journey maps to classic spreadsheets and lists of lists. But setting resolutions and actually sticking to them can be very different things.

The list is chock full of tips and tools to help you bring a creative mindset to your life and work. We hear you loud and clear: Look out for more how-tos and to-dos in 2019!

PS: Sign up for our weekly email newsletter to stay up to date with The Octopus in the new year.

1. 5 Brainstorming Exercises for Introverts

Shy people of the world, unite! Try these five creative brainstorming exercises to help the introverts among us feel more comfortable contributing their ideas.

2. An IDEO Recruiter’s 5 Tips for Writing a Better Cover Letter

Prepping for a job interview? Use these five tips from a seasoned IDEO recruiter to help you write a compelling, well-crafted cover letter.

3. This Deck of Cards Will Change the Way You Work

It can be a challenge finding the right language for critiquing creative work. That’s why a team of IDEO designers created this deck of cards to establish a shared vocabulary for cross-disciplinary teams.

4. Why Gesture is the Next Big Thing in Design

Soon, communicating with our AI assistants by talking into thin air may no longer be our only—or best—option. Here’s why gesture interfaces could be the future of interaction.

5. Why Workplace Culture Matters (And How to Build a Good One)

You might think workplace culture is about ping pong tables and sparkling water, but really, it’s about creating the conditions for employees to do the best work of their lives. Here’s how to level up your company’s culture.

6. 3 Tips to Help You Prototype a Service

Prototyping is a powerful tool in the design process, but not every prototype can be built out of cardboard and foam core. IDEO U shares tips from their newest course to help you prototype intangible service experiences.

7. 15 Podcasts Playing in IDEO Ears Right Now

Looking for some fresh audio inspiration? Feast your ears on these 15 podcasts hand-selected by IDEO designers.

8. 3 Ways to Get Comfortable with Ambiguity

As designers, it’s our job to help build the future we want to see. While that freedom can be liberating, the ambiguity can also be tough to navigate. Try these mindset shifts to help you embrace uncertainty like it’s no big thing.

9. A Cartography Nerd’s Guide to Custom Map-Making

IDEO’s resident cartography nerd shares his step-by-step guide to designing a custom interactive map.

10. 6 Ways to Hack Your Workspace and Find More Joy at Work

Research shows that feeling joy at work not only increases our wellbeing, but also our job performance. Get started with these colorful ideas from guest contributor Ingrid Fetell Lee, a designer who studies joy.

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From workplace culture to best practices for brainstorming to the future of interaction—2018 has been a year of creative growth for The Octopus. To celebrate, we’ve rounded up our greatest hits—the top ten stories that you, dear readers, have read and shared most this year.

I help organizations cut through complexity by shaping how they show up, through brand strategy, identity, and storytelling.

Working at the intersection of brand and business, I bring an editorial eye and a bias toward making—turning ideas into tangible experiences that people can understand, trust, and believe in.

My work spans government, healthcare, financial services, media, and consumer goods, from launching Gen Z-focused ventures to building innovation labs and reimagining legacy brands. I relish moments of ambiguity and enjoy translating across teams, perspectives, and priorities to move ideas forward.

I started my career in editorial and digital design, shaping cross-platform experiences and identity systems in publishing and agency environments. That foundation still shapes how I work today: I’m detail-oriented, collaborative, and overreliant on the Oxford comma. I hold a BFA in Visual Communication from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

For 25 years, I've asked the same question: Who does this design exclude—and what are we going to do about it?

My work spans human-centered strategy, inclusive design, and qualitative research, with clients ranging from Microsoft, Google, and Verizon to the National Science Foundation, and San Francisco Unified School District.

Before IDEO, I taught elementary school in East Palo Alto and spent a decade doing design work with social service organizations—where I learned firsthand what it costs people when systems are built without them in mind.

I am currently writing User Error, a nonfiction book about digital access and the design decisions behind it. I live in Oakland, California.

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My expertise spans brand, communication, and product design across tech, education, the arts, and social impact.

I believe great work demands both high-level vision and obsessive attention to detail, and only happens through collaboration.

I bring an inclusive, hands-on approach and a deep understanding of business, which enables me to consistently deliver excellence while always asking why.

Before joining IDEO, I worked at the brand firms Pentagram and VSA Partners. I began my career as a designer, leading teams at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Milwaukee Art Museum. I hold an MFA in graphic design from Maryland Institute College of Art and a BFA in communication design from the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design, and have taught at some of the best design schools in the US.

I am responsible for IDEO’s long-term success in China and working with clients to use design as a tool to enable growth. Specifically, I have helped Chinese companies design holistic brand solutions through the development of their products, communication, services, and innovation teams, and I have helped multinationals expand their presence and influence in China.

I advise global leaders on developing China-led innovation and capabilities.

In over 15 years in IDEO Shanghai, I have worked on projects that use design to elevate the quality of the experience of healthcare products and services, streamline processes that increase productivity, create spaces and programs that promote and enable inclusive communities, and build next generation mobility solutions that are planet-positive.

Before joining IDEO, I worked at Philips Electronics and the Electrolux Group in Italy, the Netherlands, and Singapore on a number of breakthrough commercial products. I am a member of the Young President Organization in Shanghai.